Friday, February 19, 2010

Developing Mediocrity

By: Christopher Matgouranis

While going through the course offerings for the next term at my university, something caught my attention: remedial education courses. It has always confused me as to why these exist at the college level. I know that remedial or developmental education courses are not limited to my institution, but exist as a nation-wide phenomenon.

At my university, there are several different remedial education courses offered in the Mathematics (such as basic algebra) and English departments. In addition to these “developmental courses,” the university houses an entire college that has a remedial education focus. This University College offers remedial courses in reading, learning strategies, and “the university experience,” plus it is fully staffed like any other college with administrative assistants, directors and deans. While there may be future educational benefits from assisting students in their adjustment to the college atmosphere, I must wonder whether the benefits associated with an entire college justify the expenditures. Setting aside the questions about the costs and benefits associated with the college, the very existence of a need for remedial education seems out of place at a university.

29 percent and 2 billion dollars. These numbers represent the staggeringly high percentage of four year college students requiring remedial education coursework and its annual dollar cost as estimated by Strong American Schools in the paper titled “The Diploma to Nowhere.” Additionally, it has been noted that there is a high positive correlation between students requiring remedial education and those that later drop out of college. Remedial Education is costly. Its pervasive presence is representative of a lack of knowledge concerning fundamental economic concepts by university admissions workers and administrators. For example, not understanding the basic idea of opportunity cost is obvious in the decision to divert resources (professors, classrooms, number of courses offered, etc.) away from brighter students and focus them on those who may not have what it takes to be in college (and tend to have a significantly higher drop out rate).

There are two different causal problems associated with the amounts of remedial education required at the university level. One issue is that the secondary public school system is not adequately preparing students for collegiate academics. And, while CCAP traditionally focuses on higher education issues, the failure of the public school system to properly prepare a significant percentage of “college bound” students for basic English/reading and mathematics classes is a serious problem and cannot be ignored. A second and distinct issue is that too many unqualified students are being admitted to college. College is not for everyone. A more efficient allocation of resources and lower social costs would be achieved by having those students requiring remedial education courses attend a community college, trade school, or start a career, instead of attending an expensive and taxpayer subsidized four-year institution.

The sheer amount of university students requiring remedial coursework and the steep price tag attached to it are an often unacknowledged problem. Until the idea that a four year college is for everyone begins to fade, it is unlikely that much will be done, causing the problem to persist and a continued rising of higher education costs.

2 comments:

I wonder how long these remedial courses have in fact been hiding in the curriculum offerings of colleges & universities.Is it a newer phenomenon?

While the author indicates that there is an increased drop-out rate noted in students taking remedial studies; it would be interesting to know how well do the non-drop out students do in terms of career and graduate studies placement?

Is there a critical threshold of knowledge base that propels one into comparable levels of academic and professional success. If these once remedial, now college graduate students are finding satisfying careers at near equivalent rates as their non-remedial peers, then one have to reexamine criticism against such programs.

"Remedial Education is costly. Its pervasive presence is representative of a lack of knowledge concerning fundamental economic concepts by university admissions workers and administrators. For example, not understanding the basic idea of opportunity cost ..."

It may well be the case that admissions workers and administrators do not understand economic concepts. But then, why would you expect them to? The function of a bureaucracy is to continue its existence. It would seem that administrators have little economic incentive to put resources towards the needs of bright students, and admissions workers even less. Their incentive is to create conditions conducive to the growth of the bureaucracy, and that probably leans towards having more, if less capable, students.

I agree that the need for remedial courses seems out of place at a university. I can understand offering remedial courses in community colleges or what used to be called adult schools, since these are traditional schools of recourse for those who failed or dropped out of high school but wish to make another go at getting an education later in life. And these schools are far less expensive than university facilities. But as I note, the economic incentives for efficiency seem to be lacking in our universities.

Postman asks, "I wonder how long these remedial courses have in fact been hiding in the curriculum offerings of colleges & universities.Is it a newer phenomenon?" A good question. The answer depends in part on what one considers to be remedial. My master's degree granting institution had a clear distinction. The basic general ed math course was entitled "Math 100: College Algebra", which was pre-calculus, which is what used to be considered a typical high school math background for those students who were college-bound. But this was a for-credit course and so was not considered remedial. For those students who did not satisfy the prerequisites for Math 100, there were several other courses (Math 95, Math 96, Math 99), which were the remedial courses. Passing these courses did not grant a student any credit, but did grant them permission to enroll in Math 100. I taught a couple of sections of these remedial classes when I was a grad student, and while grad students are relatively cheap labor, I still wonder whether it was an effective use of resources.

My impression was that the majority of my students in the remedial courses were simply working towards eventually passing Math 100 in order to meet their math general ed requirement, and would most likely never take another math course in their life. This hardly approaches the level of "numeracy", the math equivalent of literacy. If there is such a thing as a critical threshold of knowledge for academic and professional success, the threshold would likely vary depending on one's field of study or work. (How much mathematics does a poet, dancer, or historian need, after all?) Whatever it may be, the remedial courses are below that threshold. But there may be some students who go far beyond the remedial work. Unless it is entirely a myth, there probably is some small number of the proverbial underprivileged students who just need one more chance and who go on to technical careers and perhaps even advanced degrees involving much higher mathematics. I would expect the number to be vanishingly small, but I really don't have any statistics to go by, so treat it as no more than a hunch.